Tropical Allsorts: A False Start

In line with the spirit of urgency at the time, Caine had proposed that a shadow Board be established during 1947, before enabling legislation was passed, so that preliminary work could be undertaken and also so that names were known to Parliament.1 After some debate over the balance of full time and part time directors, it was decided that the chairman and deputy chairman should be substantially full time and the remainder would be expected to devote between a quarter and a third of their time to the corporation. Creech Jones recommended to the Prime Minister that the first chairman be Lord Trefgarne ‘because his approach to Colonial development accords with that of the Party, he has a first hand knowledge of Colonial conditions, has general commercial experience and knowledge of public policy and administration, and has age, health and capacity for movement on his side’.2 George Garro-Jones, created Baron Trefgarne in 1947, first entered Parliament as a Liberal in 1924. He joined the Labour Party during a seven-year spell out of Parliament in business, re-entering in 1935. He was a member of the wartime coalition ministry as a parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Production and was appointed private secretary to Lord Greenwood in the Labour government. After the war he returned to business and became a director of the newly formed Barclays Overseas Development Corporation, which some in the Colonial Office were disposed to see as a threat.